Panelists help make Frankenstein come alive at symposium

By Franklin Crawford

Freshman Hussain Sola said he had the dope on Viktor Frankenstein's motives for recreating a man from graveyard leftovers, and it's got nothing to do with cloning, genetics, The Age of Reason or scientists playing God: It's just another example of good guys going bad after their mom has died.

To back up his argument, Hussain referenced the character, Anakin Skywalker, from the movie "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones."

"After [Anakin's] mother dies, he later turns to the dark side and becomes Darth Vader," Sola said, to the rousing approval of his classmates.

Professor Robert Richardson, vice provost for research, demonstrates a Van de Graff generator during the Frankenstein community discussion panel in Barton Hall, Aug. 25, while Vice Provost Isaac Kramnick and Provost Biddy Martin look on. Peter Cohl/University Photography

Viktor Frankenstein's mother dies and he creates a monster: Ergo -- the loss of nurturing maternal guidance can have a bad effect on a guy, suggested Sola. His thesis won thunderous support from many of the more than 3,500 new students gathered in Barton Hall, Aug. 25, for a community discussion on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the book that was required reading for all incoming freshman and transfer students.

The two-hour symposium, featuring Cornell faculty panelists, was broadcast live on Time Warner Cable TV, Channel 16, and is being rebroadcast throughout the week.

Sola was not eager to yield the microphone, and he had many other points to make. However, Provost Biddy Martin, who served as the facilitator for the Barton Hall panel, politely and humorously suggested he join future panels, and then indicated his time had expired.

Sola was the first, and certainly the most animated, student to question the distinguished panel of five faculty members, each of whom delivered brief presentations from their areas of expertise. Following their talks, the audience was invited to ask questions from the floor.

In his introductory comments to the symposium, President Hunter Rawlings praised the efforts of more than 600 Cornell faculty, staff, undergraduates and post-grads who assisted in what a banner proudly displayed as the Second Annual New Student Reading Experience. And Rawlings informed the audience that this was a community event in a larger sense, one that included the city of Ithaca and the Tompkins County Public Library.

Cornell donated 750 books to the public library and another 600 to area high schools. The public library is hosting a Frankenstein exhibit that opens on Oct. 2, as well as several other Frankenstein-related activities, and many Cornellians are involved in this town-gown partnership.

"We welcome that partnership," Rawlings said. "This is wonderful way of getting the academic year off to a good start and a wonderful way for our freshman to begin the moveable feast that is Cornell."

The faculty panelists included: Robert Richardson, vice provost for research and the Floyd R. Newman Professor of Physics; Vice Provost Isaac Kramnick, the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government; Molly Hite, professor of English, Larry Palmer, professor of law; and Stephen Hilgartner, associate professor of science and technology studies.

Richardson gave a demonstration of some types of electronic "special effects" or props used in early Frankenstein movies -- and explained the basic principles behind them, along with some scientific history. The first and most spectacular was called Jacob's Ladder -- and the device looked like an old rabbit-ear TV antenna.

"There's no way Viktor Frankenstein had one of these in his day, but it looks kind of fun," said Nobel Prize winner Richardson who, in his blue shirt and bow tie seemed anything but a mad scientist.

When the transformer was turned on, bolts of electricity "climbed" up the V-shaped wires. Two huge closed circuit TV screens gave the audience a good view of the arcing streams of electric "plasma," as Richardson described the volts.

Kramnick provided the social, historical and political context of the world at the time of Shelley's writing of the book. Being the daughter of an anarchist father and a free-thinking feminist mother, both famous authors and leading intellectuals of their day, certainly influenced Shelley. She was a "a child of the enlightenment, literally and figuratively as well," Kramnick said. However, he said, she went against the grain of her time and penned her cautionary tale, fighting the profound influence of her parents and The Age of Reason, with its worship of science and reason and the high hopes for curing all human ills, even of eliminating "evil."

Hite's presentation, "Embrace Your Monster or: Why Viktor Frankenstein was Such a Bad Parent," challenged the audience to reflect on the word "monster" and its literary and real-life implications.

"I think the central question of this book is not whether we should or should not create life -- something, after all, which a lot of us have done, right?"-- but how you must take responsibility for what you do create," Hite said. "It's not only that the responsibility belongs to scientists or writers, who perform works that effect people in the world, but it's also about the responsibility of people for other people -- even if those people look really, really different ... really, really monstrous. After all, what is a monster?"

Charles Owen Smith '06, from Rochester, N.Y., addresses the panelists and the Barton Hall audience, including Kristy Debriyn '06, from Holton, Wisc., and orientation leader Edgar Allen Cabrera '03. Peter Cohl/University Photography

Palmer asked the audience to speculate on the outcome of a hypothetical trial of Frankenstein's monster, today. A team of international explorers find the monster, bring him back and it's found that his moving testimonial is used against him and he is charged with homicide, Palmer proposed. So Palmer acted as the monster's defense attorney.

The law professor didn't deny that his client committed three murders -- but he passionately argued for life imprisonment rather than execution for the monster. In a mock summation, Palmer said his client's "unique biological and social origins render him unfit for the death penalty. ... My client is legally responsible for the three killings, but the principles of constitutional law prevent the state from killing him. ... My client must be confined for the remainder of his life in prison. ... My client must live to remind us that when Viktor Frankenstein, or any of us in this room, seeks to create human life, he, and we, must take responsibility for the unexpected outcomes."

We do that, Palmer said, "by doing something that Mary Shelley never does -- we must give my client a name. He should no longer be called monster, demon or fiend, for he is in fact the son of Viktor Frankenstein, a motherless child whom we should name Viktor Frankenstein, Junior ... "

Shelley's Frankenstein, Hilgartner said, and the variations on it, have become an "important part of our cultural vocabulary for thinking about science and technology. Her story of hubris, of playing God, of tampering with life evoke questions that are repeatedly raised in science and technology, he said: Are some things too sacred to be made profane by being transformed into tools? What responsibilities do scientists bear for their inventions?"

Said Hilgartner: "The citizens and professionals of tomorrow -- you guys, the freshmen at Cornell -- are going to be confronted with a steady stream of unprecedented, complex, consequential issues, which have implications that profoundly influence the state of humanity, the course of life on the planet. And, furthermore, these issues are going to arrive at a faster and faster pace. Coping with these challenges is going to require a new kind of literacy about the social aspects of science and technology."

The ethical implications of new science and technology are at the forefront of some of the major political debates of our time, Hilgartner said, citing the current debate about cloning as an example. But cloning "is just the most recent in an ongoing stream of ethical controversies that can emerge from the cutting edge of bio-molecular science."

Hilgartner said other controversies loom in areas that include "the prevention of global warming and bio terrorism, protecting individual privacy or controlling nuclear arms, and (how best to) work to alleviate poverty in the developing world. In all of these contexts, science and technology are central to the opportunities and problems that we face." Confronting those issues will require an informed citizenry, Hilgartner emphasized.